Tag / environment

I’m not complaining about gas prices. I’m not wagging a finger at our government’s oil wars. I’m not debating what automotive technology is going to save our planet. I’m shutting up, taking responsibility and finding out for myself. I’ve been running alternative fuels for the past five years. And it hasn’t been all rainbow exhaust, green trophies and good times, my friends. Did I mention that day I had to pull chicken skin out of my fuel filter? Or how about the time my car powered down on the highway—while in the fast lane? I’ve laughed, I’ve cried. But in the end, all that matters is: would I do it again?

No Pain, No Gain I have to be honest, running my 2001 VW TDI Jetta on waste vegetable oil (WVO) has been more heartache than I had anticipated. Originally, I thought I was just going to go hire someone to convert my car, learn how to collect and filter grease, and then I’d be off saving the world, requiring only my drive and idealism to see me through. Unfortunately, my conversion immediately taught me that if you are going to run WVO, you are going to get dirty. Idealism isn’t enough.

I converted my car at Greasel in Missouri and would not recommend their conversion to anyone, I am sorry to say. Greasel custom-welded a second tank for my system and before I had made the road trip home to California, that tank sprung a leak, spilling gallons of diesel fuel all over the road—the exact thing I was trying to avoid by paying a large sum of money to have the tank custom-welded per Greasel’s own design. I also experienced immediate electrical problems with my car, repeatedly shorting out the new circuits they had installed for the three electric heating pads and the fuel-selector valve.

Within the first year, I ended up rewiring the entire system and adding relays myself. I’ve replaced the Pollak fuel-selector valve five times in five years, and the $300 electric-transfer pump Greasel sold me burnt out within a year and half. Basically everything they touched on my car malfunctioned. And, with the exception of the transfer pump, each malfunction stranded me either while parked or driving, rendering my car completely inoperable.

Greasel has since changed names and apparently ownership. They are now called Golden Fuel Systems. Perhaps they have learned more about converting VW TDI Jettas over the past five years. I certainly have.

Electrical Glitches One thing I’ve learned is that Volkswagon’s electrical systems are notoriously fickle and any after-market alterations risk glitches in the finely tuned electronics on which newer TDI’s run; even car stereo installation is a risk! The glitches can be as detrimental as air-flow meters going bad repeatedly (I’ve replaced mine four times). Or as benign as interior lights suddenly not engaging when the door is opened. Or horns intermittently not blowing, then just as suddenly returning to normal. Electric and electronic glitches are enigmatic to troubleshoot and are expensive as heck to diagnose. I have figured out how the fuel-delivery system in my car works, but to this day, I still do not actually understand how the car’s electronics work.

Finding a Mechanic I also learned that because it has not been legal to sell diesels in the state of California for years, there are next to no mechanics who know how to work on them locally. When you do find a real diesel mechanic, they often refuse to work on a car that runs on WVO. I believe this is because troubleshooting takes longer than routine exhaust and brake repairs and therefore eats into profits. It seems that a genuine mechanic is difficult to find anymore. (What has happened to those who genuinely enjoy working on cars and are excited to be the first to know everything about a new system?) I finally was able to locate a real mechanic who is not afraid to work on a more esoteric system, thank goodness.

Other Lessons Along the Way I learned that one should change his veggie fuel filter at the first sign of a power hiccup. Also that the Pollak fuel-selector valve is not rugged enough to withstand the high temperatures of heated veggie oil (and I have yet to find a replacement). And that igniting one’s car on used veggie oil in temperatures under 60 degrees is destructive to the fuel pump and should be avoided.

I have learned how to crack fuel injectors, bleed lines and suck fuel into the carb with my mouth. Most importantly, if I had all the cash in the world to start this exact project over again, this time I would buy a brand new VW Jetta, try the expensive German Elsbett WVO conversion system on a custom two-tank system straight from the get-go, and add in-line heaters myself before it’s all over.

W-V-O vs. O-L-D I have run waste vegetable oil for five years and 40,000 miles now. Would I have had to replace my airflow meter four times, my Pollak fuel selector five times and my injector pump once, had I chosen to convert a 1985 Mercedes instead of a 2001 VW? We’ll have to read a Mercedes conversion blog to answer that. But one of the questions I have to this day is: compared to a brand-new car of the same make, does running WVO require more or earlier repairs and if so, on what system components? Everyone I know has converted an already oldcar to run on waste vegetable oil. Mine is a 2001 with 200,000 miles on it. Some of the repairs are surely just old-car repairs. It would be nice to know for sure which ones are which.

Jetta Heart Attack One breakdown that was not an old-car repair and definitively WVO-related happened this spring. My Jetta would not start (again) and this time, my cool mechanic looked at me like I was driving an alien craft as he related his repair notes. “Tonya, I took seven gallons of the most disgusting gunk out of your fuel tank. I’ve never seen anything like it.” No wonder the car wouldn’t start! The lesson I learned from that repair is to never, never, never put even partially hydrogenated oil in your tank—no matter how much filtering and heating you administer. Jetta heart attack!

When running my Jetta for five months on diesel, the car ran wonderfully, started quickly every time, never smoked and had consistent power. The problems came when I started using WVO. Hmmm… So all this sounds a little daunting. And still, would I do it again? I would and I did.

A Tale of Two Vans I purchased two diesel vans for my company, a Chevy 3500 and a Ford Econoline E350. I converted the Chevy to run on waste vegetable oil using a Grease Car conversion kit, this time installed by a private mechanic. I ran the Ford on biodiesel only.

The WVO Chevy powered down while driving five times within the first 5,000 miles. The biodiesel Ford has had no issues. I did not choose to continue troubleshooting the Chevy van; the way I see it, troubleshooting should be left to personal transportation and never a company vehicle. In the future, I will be doing all my research and development off the clock. When I know I’ve got my system right, then and only then will I place that vehicle into the work force.

The Bottom Line The money I’ve saved by obtaining free fuel during the past five years has been balanced out by the cost of repairs. But, I’ve also had the supreme environmental pleasure of not running on fossil fuels. And for all the times I’ve been stranded, I’ve many more times been sitting in LA traffic feeling confident that my fuel is not creating that layer of smog in front of the Hollywood sign. Though not my intention, I have become competent and confident under the hood of a car, which is a skill that not enough women—heck, not enough men—have today. And for all the time and expense we spend on cars, it just makes sense we’d want to know how to keep them running.

Most importantly, though, committing to run on WVO has placed me in a new category of environmentalist, and proven to myself that I am not afraid to go all the way for the things I believe in. You aren’t really one of those people until you are one of them. So now I am. Before, I was just a follower, waiting for someone else to do the hard work. My personal environmental integrity has increased three-fold and my enthusiasm to take on other, bigger, experimental green projects has grown. I am free to experiment. Operative word: free.

Do I think there is one alternative-fuel answer that will heal the pollution, the politics and the consumerism of world society? No. But I do believe that alternative fuels in general can.

I encourage everyone out there to experiment and contribute to the diversification of fuel reliance. Research and develop WVO delivery systems, manufacture your own local waste-stock biodiesel, build an electric car that powers off solar panels, forge a way to import the 80 mpg, manual, diesel Smart Car from Europe. And if you want to teach your children about alternatives to petroleum-based transportation, keep those bicycles in excellent repair, and start getting the whole family into shape by riding them to the store together to pick up groceries.

I don’t have the answer because there isn’t one. There are many. It’s time to choose one, two or ten of them and get started.

Read Part 1: Converting Your Car Read Part 2: How to Select the Oil Read Part 3: How to Filter the Oil Read Part 4: Better Oil Filtering Read Part 5: Risks and Rewards

The best thing about DIY movements is that you do it yourself. This way, we aren’t waiting for some corporation to release a car that gets more than 40 mpg at a decent price. We aren’t waiting for state policy to allow us biofuels at the pump. We aren’t waiting for anything or anyone to tell us we can utilize alternative fuels now—because we’re already doing it ourselves! And because we are the ones doing our own R&D, the end result is always tailor-made, custom-fly to our specific cars and lifestyles. This is how I developed the advanced techniques below for filtering collected waste vegetable oil (WVO) to power my WVO car.

A Better Way The first two years of filtering WVO for running my 2001 VW TDI Jetta, I knew there must be a better way. I needed an oil-filtering process that required very little space, time and cleanup. This is not what I had with the tripod and filter socks I was using. They left me lookin’ like a mad scientist, all drippy in public parking lots. So in true DIY fashion, I found a better way!

Hand-Crank Pump First thing to go was that electric transfer pump I was using to move my grease from container to filter sock, then container to tank. In only two years, that expensive thing’s motor blew and I found a manual hand-crank transfer pump to be the answer to my DIY prayers. Yes, you will have to actually hand-crank your transfer pump, but people, if you have biceps at all, you can do this. It’s really easy. And that $30 pump never blows or breaks or lets you down. I got mine from Harbor Freight. But I’ve see others, like the Tera Pump, available for as little as $19.

Water Filters and Clear Hoses On the incoming end of the transfer pump, I placed two in-line water filters—the kind pool and hot-tub cleaners use. In the first, I placed a 20-micron filter element and in the second, a five-micron element.

I chose to connect all this “complicated” design work with clear two-inch hose this time, rather than the solid-colored hosing. Clear hose allows me to monitor the flow and quality of my transfer process (which is also now conveniently my filter process) and I really get a kick out of seeing the brown oil go in the 20-micron filter and the golden fuel go into my tank.

The clear hosing also allows me to see the crud that invariably settles to the bottom of the dirty storage container. Every deep fryer, from veggie tofu to Philly cheesesteak, has crud. And as soon as I see a thickness in the collected oil or too much black crud coming through the intake hose, I know it’s time to switch containers for a full one.

Building a Box Filter Finally, all of this needs to fit in a box to be a box filter. Any medium- to large-sized plastic storage container will do. In the three years that I’ve been using my box filter system, the only component I’ve had to replace is this plastic box—three times, in fact. But as much as I try to avoid purchasing new plastic items at all costs, and don’t appreciate replacing parts on my system, the light weight of plastic and the optional lid really do make plastic an ideal housing for a filtration system.

You’ll need tools, a friend with tools or some MacGyver skills for cutting the holes through your box for insetting the in-line filter and hand-crank transfer components. Make it work the way your trunk requires.

There are only two hints I feel necessary to convey and I highly recommend that you take them to heart:

1) Try to design it so that every potentially dripping edge of the filter system is inside the box. That way, the box collects the drippings instead of your cardboard or asphalt. This will make your life so much easier and it’s achievable with just a small additional effort.

2) Your hand-crank pump could benefit substantially from a secure mechanism on the back side to shore it up. A thin piece of pressboard or plywood will work fine. If you choose to not secure the hand-crank pump, the weight will wear on your plastic outer box and eventually cause a crack—exactly why I had to replace my first outer box several times. Lesson learned. Well worth considering.

For more than three years now, my custom-designed box filter has traveled the United States with me, spontaneously filtering in random parking lots, while keeping the ground, my hands and my trunk’s interior clean, and making me look like I know what I’m doing when the Location Department drivers at Fox studios wanna talk “shop” about diesel engines and alternative fuels. And I really do know what I’m talking about—because I did it myself!

Read Part 1: Converting Your Car Read Part 2: How to Select the Oil Read Part 3: How to Filter the Oil Read Part 4: Better Oil Filtering Read Part 5: Risks and Rewards

Everybody wants to know what I eat. It’s a common question from friends and I personally think it’s a super compliment. I’m not out there telling anyone what to eat. But I will always get hyped up about what’s working for me. It’s such a miracle MIRACLE – I said it – for me to not be on meds and have this clean relationship with my body – know I’ve got my back no matter what. I’ve got my own back. It’s hard to not get amped and hope that everyone I love can feel the good stuff I’m feeling, too.

Lots of raw fooders wanna tell you what to eat because you’ll pay them to. That’s cool. Commerce is a great language. But I’m not selling my diet, because the tree didn’t charge me to pick the apple from it – she just said, I have more than enough – please, eat until you’re full. To me, raw foods IS freedom.

So I think it’s ultra cool when people wanna know what I eat anyway. I know I don’t ask someone this info unless I see something is working for them and I’m like “I’ll have what she’s having”. So people I bet wanna know what I eat because they are inspired to see something working so well for someone. I hope.

I know it’s working for me and I’m open to always changing. I’m always changing and fine tuning and listening. I promise you and mySelf, if ever my ideals stop working, I will try something new. Alas, I’ve been 10 years raw vegan and … ladies and gentlemen, the WAY I raw vegan has continued to morph and grow, but raw foods remains the through line. I haven’t chosen another lifestyle yet so it’s still working.

Do I do low-fat raw food, am I a fruititarian, do I mineralize, do I systematic underfeed, do I superfood, do I liquify? Oh, my. Uh … YES. I have done and do them all when they are needed. I owe no allegiance to anything that isn’t working and my body continues to change and grow so do my plant foods. One very specific question I get asked a lot, though, is do I do “30 Bananas A Day”. Raw fooders are going to know what I’m talking about and if you’re raw-curious, Google that shit, cause the internet is our source of non-local/non-proprietary information. This is your mind you can stretch here. Choose which directions.

Well, my answer is: I’m not into low-fat raw food and I definitely don’t eat 30 bananas a day. That’s me and you asked! I’m a high-fat, long-term raw vegan athlete. You know I love my avocados! I’m one that actually practices the belief that the being’s ability to digest and assimilate their foods has much to do with it’s locality. So if it’s hot in July and dates are dropping from the desert palms like candy, a person living under that date tree will have need of hot July sugars and have the amped up digestive strength to go for it. If it’s December in Michigan, the local there would get a candida outbreak by eating dates in winter and would be most suited to digesting and assimilating root vegetables and tubers, for example, lots of cold box, mineral-dense greens and easily stored nuts.

The land which produces the plants, also produces the people. The land, plants and people work perfectly together when respected that way. Only if I were in Costa Rica would I personally eat 30 bananas a day. One, because as a Southern Californian today in May, my system is just not able to take those sugars and doesn’t need extreme amounts of water-soluble vitamins I’ve already eaten my fill of in much lower quantities. But also to me, it’s just disrespectful to the environment to ship all your raw food in from foreign lands, polluting everyone else’s back yard on it’s way to you. That’s not what I’m up to through raw foods at all. The land, the plants and the animals – work together perfectly, as nature intended. I trust nature and I name her health.

I therefore end up focusing on LOCAL, IN-SEASON and ORGANIC produce as the bulk of my diet. Nature knows what I need, I’m giving jobs to actual people in my community, I’m keeping jet fuel out of your kids backyard, it’s freshest and retains the most life-force when I eat it and bygolly, when i heed nature, my body has got my back. Every motion I make, action I take and thought I think reflects this faith. That’s what’s workin’ for me. Thanks for asking!

Sure, there are some folks living in Hollywood with garages. But I am not one of them. I hope to be someday. Oh, the American Dream: city life with a covered parking place. A place for your car, powered by waste vegetable oil (WVO), to call home. And a place to allow your vegetable-oil containers to settle their collected grease, to store fancy electric-transfer pumps and to filter your most recent finds.

Fortunately, having an outdoor storage space or driveway, though it would make my greaser life much easier, is not necessary to run a car on WVO. This oil filtration thing is a lot simpler than people think. Here’s what you need to know.

A Grassroots Movement First, let me tell you one of the things I really like about running my car on waste vegetable oil—beyond the environmental benefits and financial savings—is that it is a grassroots movement. Sure, the drawback of a grassroots movement is that no corporation is funding your alternative-fuel technology. On the other hand, you are not waiting for a corporation to fund your alternative-fuel technology. No auto manufacturer has packaged together the one-size-fits-all perfect design. But you are about to tailor-make your system with perks the manufacturer wouldn’t have known fit your lifestyle. Just right for you.

Time, Effort and Cleanliness  As mentioned, I don’t have a garage, a driveway or even one square foot of land where I can store my collected cubies, filled with free, thrice-used canola oil from the vegan Ethiopian restaurant et al. So I’ve created a way that I—and any other city dwellers—can filter their oil on the go.

The most important things for on-the-go waste-vegetable-oil filtration are time, effort and cleanliness. Time, because filtering too long in a public place, like a parking lot, can become a nuisance to other shoppers and risk that you may be asked to move on. Effort, because no one wants to hurt their backs lifting heavy equipment, which could deter their filtering oil the next time. Cleanliness, because let’s face it, we are dealing with disgusting used cooking oil here. (I am a chick living in the city and I want to be able to go straight from fueling to a hot date, if I need to.) I don’t want my car to become covered with dried grease. And I definitely don’t want to leave oil stains in the street or in parking lots; I’ve got a green reputation to protect. I want all of us waste-vegetable-oilers to be asked back.

Tools of the Trade So first thing first: Cover the inside of your trunk with reused cardboard to keep your car from getting oil stains. You will change these as often as you see the grease saturating the cardboard. (After five years of WVOiling, my VW Jetta is still a nice car!) Carry extra cardboard for throwing onto the asphalt underneath your on-the-go filtration operations. It is far easier to pick up oily cardboard than to sop up spilled grease.

In the back of your car, carry a pair of gloves, a pair of flip-flops and a mechanic’s jumper. At least that is what I do. At first, no matter how clean you think you are being, you will spill the oil on your shoes. So just wear flip-flops. And you will accidentally wipe your hands on your clothes. So put a jumper over whatever else you’re wearing.

Eventually, you will become cleaner and cleaner at your job and will need the flip-flops and jumper less and less. But you will always need the gloves. There is no way to do vegetable oiling without getting your hands dirty, so if you care, some rubber gardening gloves are ideal. It’s pretty difficult to wash the smell of the deep fryer off your skin. And we all have dates to make after fueling, so… keep those digits decent!

Rags, rags, rags. I keep five old t-shirts handy for little wipe ups. One never can predict when these will be most valuable. Spare fuel and filtration filters will come in handy, too, which you will learn as you go.

My First Filtration Method My actual filtration methods have progressed as I’ve learned about my personal needs as a greaser. At first, all I knew was that I needed to filter my collected grease to at least five microns. And everyone was saying to use a filter sock—a long, white, wind-sock-looking thing. You pour collected oil in the top and gravity pulls the clean, usable oil out the bottom, leaving the deep-fryer particulate and thick gook in the sock.

Little did I know, most people who use filter socks actually have one of those garage things. They set the sock inside some sort of 55-gallon or other large size drum and leave the oil to do its thing while they are gone. So there I was tying this filter sock to a camera tripod in the parking lot of a city health-food store very early Sunday morning (to avoid crowds).

I used an electric pump, wired to run off the 12V outlet in the trunk of my car, to transfer my just-collected oil from the transparent cubies into the top of the filter sock and then… I… waited. And waited. And waited. And while I waited, if a big wind swept by, little drops of oil would atomize and hit my car and my legs and the tripod, drying there and eventually becoming noticeable and impossible to remove.

Then, after more waiting, I would use the electric transfer pump again, this time to transfer the clean fuel from the container under the filter sock to my tank or a clean cubie for storage in the trunk of my car. I’d do 40 gallons or so at a time. It took me about an hour and a half to collect, filter and clean up by these means.

After two years of greasing, I abandoned this method for one that was less time consuming, difficult and dirty. Plus that $300 electric transfer pump fizzled out (dirty grease is thick and hard on these pumps). Ah, the glory of grassroots research and development! You really can tailor your system to exactly what fits your lifestyle!

Next week I will share with you the waste-vegetable-oil filtration system that eventually rocked my no-garage-havin’, city-slickin’, miniskirt-wearin’ urban life. Until then, think about what you would need to actually do this and what your perfect system might be.

Read Part 1: Converting Your Car Read Part 2: How to Select the Oil Read Part 3: How to Filter the Oil Read Part 4: Better Oil Filtering Read Part 5: Risks and Rewards

Now that you’ve converted your vehicle to run on waste vegetable oil (WVO), here’s what you need to know about selecting the oil and where to get it free.

There is no shortage of dirty cooking grease in the United States. From Florida to Alaska, people are sucking up deep-fried food like it was… food. But if running my car on deep-fryer oil has taught me anything, it’s that this stuff is the last thing I would consider putting in my own body. It is my dream to show up at McDonald’s someday asking for WVO and be turned down because of a shortage due to lack of interest. In the meantime, as long as people are happy to consume food fresh out of this thick, rotten, saturated-fat concentrate, I’ll make the best of it. For now, at least, there is plenty to go around. But there are some important oil-selection rules that will help you keep your vehicle running smoothly on WVO.

Read the Label The truth is, not all deep-fryer byproducts are created equal. I never ask McDonald’s for their cooking grease because… it’s too dirty to put in my car. Yes, people just ate food cooked in it, but I guess I’m a little more selective with my auto’s arteries than they are with their children’s. (No more “Happy” Meals!). Meticulous scrutiny of collected oil quality is essential to the longevity of a WVO-fueled car.

I remember once I thought I had hit the jackpot—70 gallons of oil for the taking! Do you know how far that will take a car that gets 50 miles to the gallon? I usually have to visit three different restaurants to gather 70 gallons of oil. Sure, the original carton the oil came in listed “partially hydrogenated” on its ingredient list, but a biodiesel alchemist friend guessed he could “remove the hydrogenation” and give it back to me as straight vegetable oil before chemically manufacturing it into biodiesel like he usually does.

Two thousand miles later, you should have seen my mechanic’s baffled manly face! Shaking his head as if he’d encountered a UFO; “I’ve never seen anything like it, Tonya,” he said. “Your car wouldn’t start because there were seven gallons of pure sludge in the fuel tank. I mean, this stuff was disgusting.”

Seven gallons of pure sludge in my fuel tank. It was that day I learned the first lesson of meticulous grease collection: always ask to read the ingredients on the original container your oil came in. And if it says “hydrogenated” or even “partially hydrogenated,” leave it alone. The easy collection is not worth the repair.

Inspect the Oil The second lesson of meticulous grease collection is: always inspect the oil to determine frequency of replacement. Now that we know we aren’t collecting any hydrogenated oil, we must grab a sample of that oil (one pint will do) and take a good look at it. If it is golden yellow, looking almost identical to virgin oil purchased off store shelves, then you’ve hit gold, baby! It has probably been changed after two days of deep frying. If the oil is brown, it’s been used longer. And sometimes, it is thick, cloudy and has particles floating throughout. This stuff has probably been cooking up a heart attack for 10 days or even a week and again, I don’t consider it worth the repair later.

Let It Settle The third lesson of meticulous oil collection is: let it settle. I prefer to collect my oil in the actual containers it came in—usually opaque five-gallon cubies. That way I can allow my sample to heat in the sunshine for a week, then visually note its clarity. Did water settle to the top? Did fat settle in the middle? How much black food crud is gelling on the bottom? If I want to make sure there is no water, I can take a cup of that oil and heat it over the stove. Water will pop and fizz off of a preheated griddle and the oil will warm and spread out.

I have had very few incidences of water in my collected oil, personally. But the separation test guarantees me that I have a good batch—no water, a small amount of fat, if any, and just a little crud. Plus, the act of letting the oil settle in see-through cubies before hand-filtering it into one’s tank offers the option of using all but the bottom, dirty layers.

Go Vegetarian People joke, “Doesn’t your car smell like French fries now?” And my honest response is, “No, it smells like tempura.” But really, when did people start thinking gasoline smelled normal anyway?

To get the cleanest oil possible, follow the fourth and final lesson of meticulous grease collection: collect from vegetarian Asian restaurants. This is last on my list of criteria because sometimes it’s hard to find and, although it matters, buffalo-wing oil will still do a fine job of powering your ‘mobile.

If you can collect from a vegetarian restaurant, though, their oil is much lighter and generally changed more frequently. Its even better if you can collect from an ethnic restaurant (Ethiopian, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Mediterranean, etc.). That generally will increase the quality of your oil and decrease the effort it takes to get it ready to go into your tank. Plus, I prefer to smell vegan samosas to petro-diesel when standing behind my car any day. The longer you are in the scene, the more comfortable you will get at asking restaurants that don’t share a first language with you for their oil.

Thinner Is Better You will from time to time also have the option of collecting different types of oil. The truth is, all these oils have powered my car and can power yours, so I won’t include this as a collection lesson, per se. But if given a choice, which I usually am not, I’d choose the thinnest oil to begin with.

Thick oil is fine for food (depending on it you eat such stuff or not), but in order to be fuel, it must combust, and the thinner the oil is, the lower the combustion point. Plus, thin oil won’t gel and clog up your car’s arteries. Here is a list of common oils in order of thinnest to thickest: grape seed, canola, rice, soy, peanut and olive.

Get Going You can begin selecting your oil-collection sites and building relationships even before you purchase or convert your car to run on WVO. Get a feel for it. Be grateful. Be clean. Be asked back.

After you’ve selected your cleanest oil, you’ll need to get it ready to go into the tank. (More on that in a future piece.) So much to learn and so many cool people to learn from. Becoming a member of the alternative-fuel society has far more benefits to reap than the imagined effort exerted. You are about to become one of the doers and find out who is in your family.

Read Part 1: Converting Your Car Read Part 2: How to Select the Oil Read Part 3: How to Filter the Oil Read Part 4: Better Oil Filtering Read Part 5: Risks and Rewards

Here is a sincere warning that goes out to anyone considering converting a car to run on waste vegetable oil (WVO) as I did: you are about to become a rock star. After only one visit, restaurants will know you by name, auto shops will call their friends to show you off, and people in the parking lot will want pictures with you with greasy hands. Thanks to recent television coverage, WVO is a fashionable topic in American living rooms, and when you arrive at the deli requesting dirty oil, they will act like you are their long-lost cousin and do everything but pinch your cheeks.

The Birth of Diesel The first diesel engine, dubbed the “Black Mistress,” was invented in 1893 by Rudolf Diesel. Obviously, there wasn’t diesel fuel before there was a diesel engine, so in the years that followed, Diesel perfected his invention and discovered that this engine could run on practically any hydrocarbon, including shale oil, refinery tailings, coal dust and—get this—peanut oil.

I feel like I’m just taking my little Black Mistress back to her roots. Letting her natural knotty hair grow out. Feeding her the food she was meant to eat, you know? Running vegetable oil is what this engine was designed to do!

Biodiesel Versus WVO I run waste vegetable oil, which is different than biodiesel. Biodiesel is a vegetable-oil or animal-fat-based fuel that can be run in any diesel engine without modification (yes, right now in any diesel engine). The benefits of biodiesel are that it reduces emissions by 80% compared to gasoline and can be purchased at the pump in many large and small cities. (It is especially common in middle America, where farmers have been running biodiesel for decades.) However, it is a highly refined fuel—often processed from virgin oils or fats—that utilizes highly toxic chemicals such as methanol (not to mention electricity) in its production, and costs anywhere between $2.30 to $3.80 per gallon.

WVO is literally just used kitchen grease. The processing of it involves nothing more than hand-filtering to remove the deep-fryer floaters (water and microscopic food particulate). Like biodiesel, WVO reduces emissions by 80%. But WVO has these added advantages:

• It does not require chemicals or electricity in its processing
• It is absolutely free
• It keeps a massive byproduct of our fast-food industry from being dumped into the ground water or used in our body soaps and cosmetics (yum…).

The drawbacks of WVO are (if you consider them drawbacks): you won’t be hanging out at gas stations anymore and, indeed, a little Do-It-Yourself effort will earn you the right to offer under-the-hood public interviews. Conversion Basics Now, although the Black Mistress of 1893 could handle the most gelatinous of greases, modern diesel fuel-injection systems have been engineered to run on low-viscosity diesel fuel. They can handle thick grease only if the viscosity is reduced first. This can be accomplished in one of two ways: chemically (transforming the oil into biodiesel) or thermally. By heating the oil to 160-180 degrees, the viscosity is reduced to that of diesel fuel and voila! Rudolph’s dream is realized.

So the conversion process is not an engine conversion at all, but add-on hardware that heats and filters the WVO before it gets to the engine. On my car, a hot little 2001 TDI VW Jetta, the add-ons begin at the main tank, which holds 15 gallons and is now used for waste vegetable oil. Two electric heating pads (drawing seven amps each) are installed underneath the main tank. They start heating the grease as soon as your key turns in the ignition.

From the heated main tank, a new fuel line is run to a custom 10-micron veggie fuel filter in the engine. The new fuel line is “wrapped” in two lines of coolant borrowed from the radiator, assuring that when the engine reaches running temperature, the already heated main-tank veggie fuel will maintain its 190-degree temperature all the way to the fuel filter, which is wrapped in another seven-amp heating pad. At this point, the veggie fuel—filtered and fluid—is ready to go!

My personal conversion includes one additional add-on to accommodate the compulsive gypsy lifestyle I lead. You see, I can’t tell you where I will be next week, let alone next winter, so I chose to install a two-tank system on my car. The two-tank system equips my WVO machine with a small five-gallon auxiliary tank (mine sits in the trunk around the spare tire) that is filled with biodiesel or diesel for cold-weather start-up and shutdown.  When temperatures fall below 50 degrees, my Jetta prefers a two-block biodiesel transition. Mercedes, BMWs, trucks, semis and tractors will obviously have preferences of their own. It is fair to say that every installation is a custom conversion.

Conversion Cost Prefabricated conversion kits start at $600 and go up to $3,000. Fortunately for those with the ambition, mechanical inclination and a good set of socket wrenches, converting a diesel engine to run WVO can be an inexpensive and very rewarding do-it-yourself endeavor. My personal conversion kit and installation cost a total of $2,500, which included four extra $40 veggie fuel filters, a $30 stash of filter bags and a $160 electric pump, all of which I would highly recommend. The electric pump plugs into my lighter outlet and is used to pump grease from one container to another, or from one container to my tank. The pump is lightweight and portable so this mini-skirt-wearing WVO chick can lift it without injuring her back—so nothing interferes with her autograph signing.

Indeed, fueling your car with WVO requires more commitment and consciousness than pulling up to the gas pump. But if I wanted average results, I’d be doing what average people do. I’ll settle for nothing short of extraordinary this time ’round and if it takes a little extra effort to make sure the neighbors’ kids have clean drinking water or my grandfather enjoys deep breaths of fresh air, it’s no hassle at all. In fact, it just might be precisely what I’m here to do.

Read Part 1: Converting Your Car Read Part 2: How to Select the Oil Read Part 3: How to Filter the Oil Read Part 4: Better Oil Filtering Read Part 5: Risks and Rewards

I’m a female CEO.  Yes, that’s right – I’m not just a vagabond gypsy performing artist living the American Dream.  I am also a number-loving genius female with two successful businesses on the side.  It’s taken me a bit to open up about being the President of my own company thing.  You know … I’ve got a starving artist reputation to protect.

Of course, I am not alone.  In 1997, women held half of foundation CEO positions and according to the Federal Reserve Board, women presently control 51.3% of personal wealth in the United States.  This may come as a surprise to general society beliefs.  I know it surprised me.  But now that I know I have only one thing to say;  way to go, grrls!

When I opened Happy Mandible in January 2008, I, like many new business owners – female and male – wanted to offer unparalleled quality, exceptional customer service, and make a lot of money – without sacrificing my commitment to the green movement.  The way I saw it, no amount of profit is worth leaving this world worse off for my having been here.  And that, my entrepreneur friends, is where business trends are really headed.  You will be more valuable to more people for more of the future if you jump on this eco-entrepreneur ride and pioneer green initiatives in your industry.  And you will be even more valuable if you are of the first.

Happy Mandible shops, assembles and delivers groceries to film and television sets like Fast and Furious 4, Desperate Housewives and Private Practice.   My delivery vans run on vegetable oil fuel, we offset our already low carbon output by donating to reforestation and methane capture projects through CarbonFund.org, we provide transport for on-set recyclable cardboard, utilize aggressive office waste reduction techniques and have the coolest employees in the industry hands down.  The boss ain’t bad either, they tell me:-)

Happy Mandible directly assisted FOX’s 24 craft service department in setting up drinking bottle recycling, which as you can imagine, is massive on a television show of that size.  Happy Mandible also is responsible for the expert natural products shopping that puts organic produce, vegan alternatives and health food options on 24 as well.  My company providing a much needed service to the film and television industry and showing folk how it can be done green.

Imagine my delight to discover that while Happy Mandible is going waste-free from the grass roots up, FOX’s 24 television show is doing it from the tree branch tips down.  In 2009, production on FOX’s 24 announced that craft service would no longer be purchasing individual water bottles for set.  That means Happy Mandible’s employees don’t have to purchase ANY plastic water bottles for set anymore!  And that means my employees don’t have to transport them for recycling after actors and extras discard them after one sip.  Rather, the cast and crew are now filling cups from 5 gallon water dispensers.  And heck, maybe some of those cups are reusable, depending on the crew member.

I remember when I was an actor on the set of SciFi’s Who Wants To Be A Superhero in 2006.  I brought my glass water bottle to set, as I do in every day life, and had to search for a refill source and keep an eye on that piece of reused gold else a grip thinks it trash and removes it (fatally) from the shot.   Well, times are catching up with me and my personal green paradise is actualizing every day.  An actor on FOX’s 24 set today not only gets to bring their own non-leaching water bottle for refilling in reused 5 gallon containers, but they also enjoy power generators fueled by blended biodiesel, green power purchased from the LA Department of Water and Power for all on-stage production activities, scripts incorporating the issue of global warming when appropriate, PSA’s shot by Kiefer Sutherland and key cast members about climate change and much, much more.  In fact beginning with season 7 (the season Happy Mandible was brought on) FOX’s 24 became the first television production ever to save enough energy and reduce enough carbon emissions over the course of a season to render its entire season finale carbon neutral.

I write about it here because I believe in the entertainment industry.  Mass media changes global consciousness quicker than politicians.  Let’s face it – we have bigger audiences.  And many 24 fans might not know how progressive their favorite television show is unless I gave’em a shout out here.  And other network studios can follow suit, having a successful role model, now that they know another facility has done is successfully.  Please follow the Environmental Media Association, celebrating their 20th anniversary, to honor and celebrate film and television productions increasing environmental awareness.  All of us can write about others dong their part, we can shout it out to the community at large and we can support organizations that spread the word too.  You don’t necessarily have to know how to convert your fleet to run on vegetable oil fuel.  We need communicators and town criers to share ideas and connect this movement across the globe.

I look forward to more and more productions taking courageous green initiatives, like 24.  I look forward to all business owners valuing environment before, and not in spite of; profit.  I look forward to seeing women’s compassionate intelligence permeate the businesses we are owners of.  And I look forward to not hiding behind a starving artist facade any longer, and shouting out loud – I am a She-EO!  I am a business owner making a difference and I matter now more than ever.

In episode 9 of The Eco Tourist, my very home-shot/edited series documenting a 3 week volunteer conservation trip to Thailand where my travel partner and I work with the endangered Asian elephant, we check out what other conservation initiatives, besides endangered species rescue, the Elephant Nature Park takes to protect the environment, culture and species.  Told from the perspective of two Hollywood-based high raw vegans working in the film/television industry, please enjoy my self-produced web series, The Eco Tourist, episode 9.

Read about some of the other rescues at the Elephant Nature Park, Thailand here.

I’m living the waste-free lifestyle at home. Over time I have reduced my desire for new products, refined my recycling methods, transitioned to human-powered or solar-powered appliances, and experimented with alternative automobile fuels and non-auto transportation. Life is so much simpler now that those systems have become second nature. And there is something deeply satisfying knowing that my two-person household tosses only five gallons of actual garbage per month into a landfill.

When I was on tour in STOMP for years, my waste creation was even less.  Mostly because waste-free living doesn’t happen at the trash or recycling bin, it happens at the checkout counter. On tour, you only have a suitcase for years of storage, and the accumulation of stuff you have to lug around is low priority. You say ‘no’ to purchases all the time, and that ‘no’ at the checkout counter is ultimately what makes the biggest difference in final waste output.

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, the longer people take care of themselves through waste-free living or the raw vegan diet, the more energy they have available for taking care of a world outside of their personal green safety zone.

On tour with STOMP, eventually I was satisfied with my personal consumption patterns, but lo and behold, my performance every night, breaking broomsticks, trashing metal garbage cans, ripping apart newspapers—all in the name of music!—was overwhelmingly wasteful. I asked the stage manager what our company did in each city with that waste and he disclosed that we recycled all the metal garbage cans and ‘if there were available facilities’ (a rarity) we recycled the newspaper and drinking water bottles, too. The broken brooms got tossed.

And then I went deeper: what about these massive theatrical lights raging all day for load-in and during the performance? What about the cross-continent flights our entire cast and crew were jumping on every other week? Were they ‘worth it’ just because we were making art? I didn’t consider a tea at Starbucks worth the paper cup. I do really value art and entertainment as more vital to community enrichment than drinking another chai latte, but where does one draw the line?  And being just one person, how effective could I be at greening my entire workplace anyway?

The more people involved in a system, the longer it takes to change. We know on a personal level how difficult it is to remember to place those reusable grocery bags back in our cars after we’ve unpacked them in the kitchen. It takes a few weeks to make it a habit. The change, I admit, is awkward. But I am a human, one of a species with massive self-awareness and the ability to build skyscrapers, cure infections and design a better iPhone. Remembering the reusable grocery bags really isn’t such a big deal when you think about it that way.

So here I am in Los Angeles, in an awkward career transition myself, from live stage performance (touring, concert dance, theatre) to film and television. And, oh, my aching green heart! Film and television’s bigger budgets beget bigger waste! It’s almost enough to make an environmental pioneer throw in the towel— watching entire dumpsters get filled with unopened boxes of donuts and half-drunk water bottles at a production wrap. And watching entire carpets, tarps or living plants get tossed because they can’t be stored immediately or used in the next shot.

The machine is massive in Hollywood and, because there are so many people working on the production line, it will take a long time to change. But as soon as one person in the production office, one actor on set, or one prop master speaks up, then the change begins. And it has begun, thanks to individuals effectively changing their personal lives and finding they have the energy to be available for caring for the world outside their personal green safety zone.

Jack Dagger and I performed our knife-throwing duet on the Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien.  Before leaving set, I thanked the talent executive, JP Buck, for not offering individual plastic bottled water. He knew exactly what I was talking about and we discussed the Tonight Show‘s green initiatives out loud in front of all the guests and production crew. JP said that they offered water in the five-gallon dispensers and people working on the show refilled their bottles. In a machine as big as the Tonight Show at Universal Studios, people drink a lot of water, so this initiative really does have an environmental impact.

He then offered that the production office recycles paper. And believe me, there is a lot of paperwork in a production office. It really does matter. I thanked him out loud for being part of a company that has adopted these green efforts on set, and for being educated and able to discuss them.

In the future, I hope to see the costume department incorporate soap nuts for their laundering. I hope to see the hair department using cruelty-free, biodegradable hairsprays and gels. And I hope that the production assistants serve coffee pre-brewed in air pots rather than those single-serving, peel-away containers. In any case, in the green community, it is important to recognize the efforts companies are making and say it out loud.

When I see the infrastructure of the television and film industry incorporating environmental practices, I know it is only a matter of time before that translates to every person in the workplace and every viewer in the world. I’m placing my bet on the entertainment industry being a key player in the popularization of the green movement. And I am happy to say I am one of the people who has taken responsibility for my personal actions—joyously, patiently and with positivity—in helping to change my workplace.

You began the journey to a waste-free Shangri-La as a green consumer. Abandoning your socially programmed obsession with convenience and disposability, you consciously purchased the greener antiperspirant, greener lawn spray and greener automobile. You realized that you had a vital role in political environmentalism, for you possessed a precious thing: a vote that was religiously and obsessively tallied—the dollar. You understood that when you changed your vote, from say disposable plastic cutlery to biodegradable vegetable cutlery, you really were changing the political arena—and relatively fast.

But greener consumerism wasn’t enough for you. You then claimed the identity of the non-consumer, prizing reused things, swapped, gifted and shared items above all others. Your carbon footprint went honorably neutral as you reduced your purchases. And as you continued down that path, perhaps you found, like me, that food doesn’t have to come in packaging—and that if a cartoon character is used to sell it, it’s likely not a food at all.

With these lifestyle changes, you’ve seen a substantial decrease in the garbage you generate. Shangri-La is becoming more real and your lifestyle more satisfying with every product not purchased.

Am I right?

I remember growing up in a farm town, thinking thoughts no peer seemed to understand. It was important to me, even in my lowly teens, to know that I was supporting the locally owned record store rather than the big-city chain nearby. I had been vegetarian for eight years by that time, so ethical (or as I like to say, communal) considerations affected my purchases, too. I was already dancing professionally then, and hey, a girl sometimes needs dance shoes. Oh, the years of internal debate surrounding the need for new leather dance shoes!

No matter how waste-free or compassionate your ideals are, any member of Western society eventually has need of a product they do not agree it’s ethical to purchase. I thought I had answered this quandary when I went leather-free for many formative years. And although it felt great to dress without the Death karma (I’ll say it!), eventually I noticed that everything with which I was replacing my leather belts, boots and wallets was made of petro-plastic and man-made materials—entirely non-renewable, non-reusable, non-degradable and manufactured in overseas sweat-shops. Yes, my new accessories were vegan, but were they green or even cruelty-free?

Several years later, having long since graduated as valedictorian of my high-school class, my anguish over this topic has yet to be remedied. Here I am now, a full-grown, self-directed, free, adult woman—and still tormented.

I am, however, enthusiastic to share with you something that has renewed my faith in our common destination: Cherry Bombin’ Wear, a woman-owned small business in Arizona that recovers used inner tubes from bicycle tires for sewing into rockin’ ID cases, wallets, business-card holders, wrist cuffs and belts. No animals are harmed in their manufacture, the recovered material actually lasts longer than leather, and every item keeps another inner tube out of our landfills. You can see why that would give a long-term vegan and environmental enthusiast some satisfaction. That’s just a little tip from me to you.

Certainly our journey toward a waste-free lifestyle is made with a combination of green consumerism, non-consumerism and lastly, a flat-out refusal to consume. I wish for you, in the beginning, all the coolest thrift-store belts you could possibly want. And eventually, I hope the question bubbles up from somewhere down deep—why do you want any belt at all? Maybe we’re closer than we think to having everything we want.

Even so—let me know if you ever do come across a pair of hemp-upper tap shoes. Cool?